Rules of Vengeance

A man he assumed to be Voorhuis stood on the ru

Eleven minutes.

A Volvo FH16 carrying a Cat backhoe out of Basel, Switzerland, gave Jonathan momentary hope. The cab had a rest area behind the driver’s seat, and the Swiss plates meant free passage across borders. Even the driver looked okay, a middle-aged schoolboy wearing a silver cross around his neck. It was the biblical scripture airbrushed on his cab’s side panel that was the problem. If push came to shove, there would be no doubt that he would offer up a prayer and scream for the police. Besides, Switzerland wasn’t far enough south.

It was then that he saw it. Situated above the ticketing office stood a regulation highway-sized digital billboard, and on the billboard was a color photograph of Dr. Jonathan Ransom. A scroll ru

Despite the heat, Jonathan felt a chill along the back of his neck. All he had in the way of a disguise was a watchman’s cap to cover his graying hair and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. It wasn’t much, but for the moment, no one could match him to the man on the billboard. He stared at the picture of himself. It was the same photo used in the convention’s brochure. There was no longer any chance of bribing his way onto a truck. He’d have to sneak aboard.

The clock ticked down to ten minutes.

Ten minutes to find a way out of England.

Jonathan rubbed the sweat out of his eyes and kept moving.

The parking lot was a modern-day stockyard, with eighteen-wheelers and double-rig juggernauts taking the place of longhorn steers and grass-fed cattle. The random blare of an industrial-strength air horn was as disconcerting as the lowing of ten thousand frightened cattle, and the billowing exhaust every bit as noxious. If you couldn’t see the English Cha

Jonathan came to the end of a row and moved down the next. He’d left London at the wheel of Meadows’s Jag. He’d found the car around back, exactly as Jamie had said. It was a risk, but then everything was. He’d driven until three, then pulled off the motorway in Canterbury to rest, but he’d been too wired to sleep.

It had been five when he arrived at the ferry. After checking the morning’s schedule, he’d driven to the outskirts of town and parked on the fourth floor of a long-term garage. He’d even gone so far as to steal a tarp from a nearby Mercedes and throw it over the Jag.

Another horn sounded. Longer and louder. At the rear of the lot, a boom dropped, effectively prohibiting any further entrants. Jonathan stopped, leaning against a fender to scan the assembled armada of trucks. There were rigs from Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Spain. Where was Italy?

Jonathan’s logic was straightforward, if problematic. Emma claimed to have been attacked in Rome. By the look of the scar, the wound had demanded immediate medical attention, if not a convalescence in the hospital. Somewhere there would be a record of her admittance. He was sure she hadn’t used her own name. He could rely on a picture and his own expertise in dealing with hospital administrators. That and something else.

His work provided one last arrow in his quiver. Years back, an Italian physician had joined the Doctors Without Borders mission in Eritrea on the horn of Africa for a three-month rotation. (This short stay was more the rule than the exception. Most doctors who gave their time to DWB did so temporarily. Stints normally lasted between three and six months.) The doctor’s name was Luca Lazio, and if Jonathan wasn’t mistaken, his practice had been near the Borghese Gardens in Rome.

There remained one small problem. Jonathan and Lazio hadn’t parted on the best of terms. In fact, a broken nose might have been involved somewhere along the line. But Lazio owed him. Of that, there was no doubt. Lazio owed him big.

Either it was Rome or it was nothing.

A shrill whistle followed the horn, and there was a thunderous, knee-shaking rumble as the drivers fired up their engines and shifted the drive trains into first gear. One by one, the rigs boarded the ferry, advancing up a wide black iron ramp and disappearing into a murky netherworld for the ninety-minute traverse.

Panicked, Jonathan began to jog through the rank of trucks.

And then he saw his chance.

On the rear flank, the driver of an Interfreight lorry was only now climbing down from his rig and rushing toward the ticket booth. He held a phone to his ear, and his red cheeks and vocal responses made it apparent he was engaged in a quarrel. Jonathan edged closer to the truck. He couldn’t see the plates yet, but it no longer mattered. Anywhere was safer than England. He rounded the back of a gleaming chrome monster hauling natural gas and pulled up. The driver had disappeared inside the ticket office. His cab sat 12 meters away. The morning sun reflected off the windscreen, making it impossible to ascertain whether or not someone was riding shotgun. It was then that he spotted the license plate. Black, rectangular, with seven white numerals following the prefix “MI.”

“MI” for Milano.

He had found his chariot.

Jonathan approached the truck at a confident clip. He climbed onto the passenger-side ru

There was a curtain behind the seats. He parted it to reveal two single beds side by side, unmade, with clothing strewn across the blankets. In place of girly mags, there was a pile of newspapers-French, Italian, and English, issues of Der Spiegel and Il Tempo, and a volume titled History of Stoicism. Great, he thought, the truck driver as intellectual. He glanced over his shoulder. The driver had emerged from the ticket office and was hurrying back to the truck, the phone still clamped to his ear.

Jonathan wedged himself between the seats and pulled the curtain closed. Gathering a ball of clothing, he lay down on the far bed, arranged the blankets over him, and covered himself with the wrinkled (and sweat-stained) garments. He’d just set his head down when the door opened and the cab rocked with the arrival of the driver.

The truck lurched ahead. There was the spark of flint, and then a hint of tobacco as the driver fired up a cigarette. All the while he talked. He was Italian, a southerner by his accent. He was speaking to a woman, probably his wife, and the subject was grave. She had spent too much for a new mattress when the family needed a new water heater. Civil war was imminent.

There was a thump, the truck descended a ramp, and then came a hollow knock as the truck advanced across the ferry deck. It drew to a halt. Jonathan waited for the driver to descend and avail himself of the myriad pleasures aboard ship. The travel time across the cha

But the driver didn’t budge. For the next ninety minutes he remained on the phone with his spouse, whose name, Jonathan learned, was Laura, and who apparently had at least three dimwitted brothers who owed the family a great deal of money. He did not stop smoking the entire time.